Category Archives: Death Spells

Way before My Chemical Romance quietly adjourned in late March, guitarist Frank iero and keyboardist James Dewees were already concocting abrasive electronic music under the name Death Spells. Free from obligation, Iero now finds himself in the driver’s seat with equal parts excitement, confidence, and abject terror.

Last spring, during demo sessions for what was intended to be the follow-up album to Danger Days:The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys, My Chemical Romance guitarist Frank Iero flew his family from New Jersey to Los Angeles to be with him. When his kids became restless with California, the doting dad acquiesced and let everyone go back to their Jersey homestead. Iero moved out of the living space and into auxiliary keyboardist James Dewees’ dodgy apartment in North Hollywood. The complex they were living in was a non-stop bacchanal of shawties-in-waiting hoping to get a chance to do some work twerking in some rapper’s video- and the music constantly blaring reflected that.

“When the days in the studio were getting shorter, we started hanging out back at the apartment with all this weird dance music being played around us,” says Iero.”James and I would go for long walks and talk about what kind of music we’d like to make for fun, and it pretty much started from there.”

So Iero and Dewees filled up their new pad with plenty of synthesizers, hard drives, software, and effects borrowed from MCR’s studio and proceeded to create their take on electronic music- a dark, over-modulated, cathartic pulse with Iero out in front, shrieking his throat raw or intoning like the creepy villain from The Silence Of The Lambs. As Death Spells, the duo have created a different beast altogether, avoiding trendy dubstep wobbling, tired electronic-flecked metalcore and faux feel-good rave fodder for some seriously ugly and mechanized post-punk you could listen to while dancing, moshing, or vandalizing a police station. They liked the noises they were making, so Iero and Dewees signed on as an opening act for a week of shows supporting Mindless Self Indulgence in early April. But shortly before Death Spells’ live debut, My Chemical Romance announced they were going their separate ways, leaving behind a bunch of songs Iero describes as “almost another Conventional Weapons situation except there wasn’t anything finished, just things in demo form.” Coincidence?

Not really. Iero is adamant the pursuit of Death Spells had nothing to do with MCR deciding to adjourn. He rolls his eyes at some of the most ridiculous rumors circulating about the band’s break, especially the one positing the members are regrouping under a different name to get off of Warner Bros. ( a fallacy popular with fans and self-aggrandizing British music-mag editors who don’t understand the term “first right of refusal”). Having just arrived back from a redeye flight from Los Angeles, Iero is jet-lagged but excited to talk about his future, reflect upon MCR’s legacy, and address all the uncertainty anyone would feel when hitting the reset button on his or her career. “Be it immaturity, throwing caution to the wind or just being punk rock, we didn’t give a fuck about what anyone else thought”, he says about his former band’s decision to retire. “Unless we were happy with it, we weren’t going to do what we didn’t want to do. We played it by our own rules, for better or for worse. That’s how we started it, that’s how we ran it and that’s how we ended it.”

Being responsible for some of the more unlikely aspects of certain My Chemical romance songs , the fractured hardcore of Leathermouth and now Death Spells’ raw-nerve scree, do you think fans and critics expect a certain thing from you?

FRANK IERO:I feel comfortable in awkwardness. [Laughs.] I think for some reason, people need to define, expect and pigeonhole things. This past week, I was talking to a few people about doing things for different outlets like movies and TV. A lot of them were like, “So you do this kind of thing? “ And I said, “Well, let me play you some stuff. “ And then the response was like, “Wow, Really? You do this, too?” I like catching people off-guard. I think people expect a certain thing from me and it’s not necessarily what I’m like at all. But I like that, as well; I like that people expect a certain thing from me, but very rarely get it. [Laughs.]

Currently, there are a ton of subgenres in electronic music. What was the overarching concept with Death Spells that you agreed upon?

I think [James and I] were rebelling against what we were creating in the studio- the day job- and the night shift were these two dudes who still wanted to be making music 24/7. What came out was the seediness of the area we were living in, the ability to get really loud and dirty but not get kicked out of the apartment and to get as grimy as humanly possible. There was no expectation as to what it was going to turn into. James would ask, “Hey, this is pretty grimy. Does this move you?” And I’d listen to it and go, “Yeah, I can totally curse over this for three minutes.” [Laughs.]

I’d assume the music sounds the way it does because you’re in a crap neighborhood, there’s all this bad music and annoying people at top volume in the building and you miss your family. But knowing Dewees, he’s like the post-emo Tony Robbins, where, “Dude! Everything is good!”

Absolutely. He is the silver lining embodied. He’d be baking stuff-cakes, soft pretzels-and bring it to the studio and make everybody happy. His demeanor is always jovial, but it’s in his musical sensibilities where he gets dark. I’m kind of the yin to his yang: He wanted Death Spells not to be his usual project. He was making music that was speaking to my dark side, and it started to work in a way we hadn’t expected to. With Reggie and the Full Effect, he wrote those parts and I just played guitar. When he was playing in Leathermouth, that stuff was written and recorded before he came in. When it came to My Chem, it was different. So Death Spells is the first time we gave birth to something.

What are plans for Spell-binding recordings? Because your name is obviously on MCR’s Warner Bros. contract, I’d assume the label gets first dibs on Death Spells material.

Yeah. I’m in legal limbo with a couple of things, right now. I’m curious to see what’s going to happen. We had plans on releasing some things, but I was told that is not the best idea right now. A few months ago, I put up [online] that Christmas song and that Ronettes cover (“Be My Baby” ), just to put them up and see what happens. And then I got the phone call. [Laughs.] We’ll see what happens after this article comes out and whether or not Death Spells have a home or are free agents. But I’m ready to get more stuff out there, more than just one muddled-and-muted- song on SoundCloud.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I always saw you as the biggest cheerleader in My Chem. You’re kind of like a shark: Sharks don’t sleep; they have to keep moving. It seems like you’re always doing something musical or working on other unnamed projects.

You’re right. I’m a huge fan of music in general. I buy new music constantly; I seek out and listen to new music; I create it- whether it’s good or not- and need for it to be out there. I like to have things that I make not just heard by myself, whether I’m 100- percent proud of it or not. I need it to live and breathe out there. And sometimes it’s my own downfall. I was very much a proponent of keeping things going [in MCR]. Sometimes you bend over until your back breaks to keep things moving because you believe in it so much. In order for me to survive, I need to live outside the My Chem walls for a little while. I think that goes for everybody in the band: You reach a point in your life when you realize, “Shit, we’re not getting younger, even if we don’t act that way.” And there are things on the bucket list you don’t want to forget about. We’re all living our lives right now. Just going off and crossing off your list is healthy for everybody.

Was it a situation of ‘Kill the band,save the friendships?

Yeah. Listen, those guys will always have a piece of my heart.I love those guys to death.I grew up with them at my side. They are all my big brothers,and sometimes-to a fault-I will go out of my way to try to impress them or go out of my way to seek their approval on things. I have such a love for them. Second to my children,the band is the thing I am most proud of in my life. It will always hold a dear place in my heart. But I see where things needed to end in order for us to be the people we needed to be. A this point in our lives, it wasn’t in the cards. It’s hard to let go,but I know we ended it for the right reasons. Not only am I excited for my future, I can’t wait to see what those guys are going to do next.

Being a psychic cheerleader can be exhausting.

You give everything because you think it’s the right thing to do, and sometimes you’re forcing it for yourself. But I’ve always been a big proponent of “If you love doing it, well then fucking do it.” So that’s what I do. I love [playing and making music], so I’m going to do it.

What’s interesting to me is that you’re a full-on doting father and loving husband, but then you have the capability to make some crazy antisocial music. And since you’re kind of hitting reset on your career, how do you make this kind of decidedly non- commercial music and still provide for your family? How do you reconcile that?

I am a totally miserable fuck when I am not creating. I know deep down that in order for me to be the best father I want to be- the dude that my kids want to be around- I need to be creating. I can’t help it. If I’m not creatively fulfilled, I just crumble as a person. My wife understands that- she knew that from the beginning. But there are so many things that are new to me that I want to try. Things that make me think, “ I’d like to try my hand at that,” or “Man, I could totally fuck that shit up!”. Right now, I have nothing but dreams to fulfill- and that’s a scary and exciting and confusing and amazing time right now.

This week, former My Chemical Romance guitarist Frank Iero and MCR auxiliary keyboardist James Dewees hit the road as Death Spells, opening several shows for Mindless Self Indulgence. Given MSI’s penchant for challenging their audiences’ expectations (they did call an album Alienating Our Audience, after all), Death Spells’ band of electronic miasma and unbridled ugliness should make potential attendees as uncomfortable as possible. The way Iero explains it, that very intention was seemingly built into the band’s name.

“My wife’s grandmother was having these moments where she would stop breathing for a second,” he begins, referring to the late relative. “I’d think, ‘Oh, my God, she’s passed away,’ but then she’d wake up. It was like one of these weird little spells—these weird little death spells where she would wake up and say, ‘No, I’m just really tired.’ To me, [the name invokes] these little introductions to another world and coming back from it—kind of leaving this world but not for too long, then snapping back to reality.”

Death Spells came to fruition after hours last year when Iero and Dewees were done in the studio working on MCR music. Iero moved into Dewees North Hollywood apartment, located in a complex overrun with would-be rap-video starlets listening to bad hip-hop and dance music. As a response, the duo decided to create their version of dance music, an ugly, blackened synergy of mechanized dance-beats, overmodulated noise and samples, as well as various goth-rock, post-punk and no-wave signifiers.

“Shortly after we started making a lot of noise, people started to move out of that section of the building. [Laughs.] At one point, James went shopping for large plants and put them all in front of the windows, so if you were to look in, it would be this huge jungle setting!”

The affable Iero has always been a little perverse regarding his personal music projects. This past December, as a joke, he created a short drum-machine-and-distorted guitar rave-up, “Xmas Sux” (listen above) and slapped it up on SoundCloud. “That was a joke I did on Twitter that got a lot of weird venom shot back at me. [imitates snotty kid.] ‘Hey, fuck you, Christmas is awesummm!’ [Laughs.] I was like, ‘Wow! If only I would’ve done a complete song!’ I wish I could’ve recorded my kids crying in the background and actually made it better.” The first Death Spells song Iero and Dewees completed was “Choke On One Another,” a track with a marching-band cadence and a whole lot of gruesome noise thrown over the top, that had more to do with the various gear they borrowed from MCR’s studio, than trying to emulate dubstep, EDM or tired industrial rock. “We were geeking out over different keyboards and other gear we’d find in the studio and sneak home so we could fuck with things in a really small apartment,” he says, laughing. “I think it came from trying to blow up each other’s speakers!” The duo’s tracks run both a sonic and atmospheric gamut, from the aural epilepsy of “Where Are My Fucking Pills?” to the piano-based dark ambience of “End Of Life.” The diversity is another key to evolution of the duo’s working relationship. “Eventually down the road, I’d like to bring in a drummer and possibly a guitar player,” he opines. “But for right now, I think we need to figure out what Death Spells is. Right now it’s going to be Dewees controlling the brain, and me on a mike with some effects going through it. I have an order in for a three-foot neon cross. I hope it makes it in time for the first show.”

Both Iero and Dewees are going to be pretty busy in the ensuing weeks. After this brief run of dates, the duo will be pursuing other projects: Dewees will be teaming up with fellow Get Up Kids colleague Matt Pryor for a series of duo shows in May, as well as writing for the next Reggie And The Full Effect record, which is being funded via Kickstarter. If you go over to the website for the return of the Skate And Surf Festival, you’ll not only see Death Spells on the lineup, but a reconvened version of Leathermouth, the angular hardcore band Iero started in 2007. The one thing he won’t be doing is mourning the demise of My Chemical Romance. Not because he’s a jerk; he’s just too damn busy.

“It got to a certain point where it seemed like it wasn’t working anymore,”he says about the band’s decision to break up in late March. “I am Holden Caulfield-esque and don’t like to let go of things and prefer things to stay the same. And I was such a fan of the band—I never wanted it to end, even though maybe it should’ve. I would do whatever it took so it could continue to go for the greater good. Sometimes it breaks your back, but you do it for the right reasons.”

In the My Chem cover story in AP 221, Iero was unconcerned about any notion of self-sabotage of his previous band’s career. “I don’t give a shit,” he told this writer. “If I had to work at McDonald’s for the rest of my life to play shows and ride in a shitty van on tour? I’ve done it. I’ll do it again.” Now more than ever, that comment seems remarkably prescient. Having left a commercially successful band to play decidedly thorny music isn’t the kind of thing that puts food on the table. So don’t go looking for Death Spells to pull up to the front of a venue in a super-luxurious tour bus.

“I’m really interested to see what two dudes touring in a car will look like,” Iero says. “I think it’s going to be strange, scary and fun at the same time. I’ve always been a big proponent of a band setting; I’ve always liked the idea of ‘the gang.’ Now that the group has been whittled down, it’s kinda interesting to see what’s going to happen onstage.” Alt

Death Spells begin touring with Mindless Self Indulgence in Baltimore, Maryland, on April 11. New tracks and video clips can be experienced atdeathspellsmusic.com

My Chemical Romance’s journey has been astonishing. Growing up in New Jersey, they were at the heart of a scene that spawned the likes of Thursday and other acts associated with the band’s first label, Eyeball. Growing up, all four of the band say they were misfits. Gerard said his time at school was “pretty solitary. I didn’t have too many friends. I was really isolated and found solace at the comic book store. One of my first days in high school I sat all alone at lunchtime. It was the classic story – the weird kid in an army jacket, a horror movie T-shirt, long black hair. People were never really mean to me, though, they mostly just left me alone. I think I wanted to be alone, too”

Frank grew up sneaking into clubs to see his musician father play before joining local act Pencey Prep and gigging in halls, basements and anywhere that would have them. Meanwhile, Ray says he was one of the “invisible masses” in high school, and spent a childhood indoors trying to play Hendrix, Zeppelin and Metallica riffs while pondering a career in film. It was him, Gerard, Mikey and drummer Matt Pelissier who first came together as a band, kick-started by Gerard watching the Twin Towers collapse on September 11 2001, and realising that, with life so fragile, it was worth doing something with it. From that days on, he put down his comic book dreams and turned to music.

“I was in Hoboken, which is right across the Hudson River,” he said. “There were 400 people and me. Right in front of us, those buildings went down. It was the biggest fucking neutron bomb of mental anguish you’ve ever felt. From then on, I was in my parent’s basement with a very small practice amp and a very old Fender guitar. That’s when I wrote Skylines and Turnstiles [as a reaction to what he saw on 9/11] and some of the earlier material. I wrote those songs sitting in my pyjamas with notebooks all around me. It was me going, ‘All this stuff has been inside me for years and I want to get it out,’ I wasn’t depressed at that time exactly, but I mas certainly a hermit”

It was Gerard’s brother, Mikey, who found their name. He worked in a bookstore and, while flicking through the racks one day, came across the Irvine Welsh Book Ecstasy: Three Tales Of Chemical Romance. From then on, their identity was complete. They plagued Thursday’s Geoff Rickly to produce them.

“Gerard came up to me at a party and said, ‘Me and my brother are going to start a band.’ When your friends says that to you at a party, you think, ‘Okay whatever,’ ” recalled Geoff. “He said , ‘No, I’m serious. We’re going to be called My Chemical Romance.’ I laughed and said, ‘Well, at least you’ve got a great name.’ ” But they forced him to the studio in early 2002 and, a few months after they formed, they had made the rough diamond of their debut.

“The beginning of the band was a pretty magic thing,” said Gerard. “We felt like we were on fire, that nobody could touch us. Nobody could figure out what we sounded like, they just knew they liked it. There was this energy – we were like a fucking gang.” Needing an extra guitarist, they turned to their friend in Pencey Prep, Frank, and with the album made, toured it fanatically. It was there, on the road, that they discovered what they had. Something about their intensity, their openness and blackened poetry not only connected with the small crowds they found but inspired, too. From New Jersey nobodies, They became underground somebodies, their power and passion too potent to ignore.

By the time of second album Three Cheers Fro Sweet Revenge, though, the had been knocked off course. Gerard and Mikey’s grandmother died the night they returned from a tour.

“Se died the night I got home,” said Gerard. “The emotions I went though at that moment and over the next six days completely fulled…Revenge. All the fucking anger, the spite, the beef with God, the angst, aggression and the fucking venom all came from those six days. When I lost her, I felt like I lost my mentor.” He took out his frustrations by drinking heavily and popping Xanax, an antianxiety pill. Meanwhile, the pressure on his band to record a major-label album was tightening. “It was a very fucking insane place to be at that moment,” said Gerard.

The album was made in LA, and three of the band – Gerard, Mikey and Frank – threw themselves, at least partially, into a hedonistic lifestyle. “When we weren’t making music, there was such a fog. Some of us were experimenting with pills. We’d all just vanish for days when we weren’t in the studio,” said Gerard. But the record they made was extraordinary. Furious, ambitious, imaginative, howking punk-rock, it was stunning. In lead tracks like I’m Not Okay (I promise) and Helena, they had written anthems. Yet as it was readied for release, the band were in trouble. Drummer Matt Pelissier was becoming isolated – eventually sacked was becoming isolated – eventually sacked and replaced by Bob Bryar – while Gerard was drinking to the point of breakdown.

An eight-ball of cocaine, handful of pills and his daily bottle of vodka in Kansas in 2004 caused one collapse, while binge-drinking sake in Japan soon after persuaded him to get help. As he got clean, so Three Cheers…became a phenomenon. No rock band in years had created the impact My Chemical Romance had then. Their fans were not simply fans; it became almost a cliche for crowd to tell band they had saved their lives.

And so it built, through the recording of The Black Parade and on until Danger Days vibrant slashes of colour and sound. They were the biggest, most innovative, most glorious band of the last decade. Four kids from New Jersey did something when they came together that no other band in 12 years has equalled: they created music that gave people a reason to live. How many others can say the same?

Where they go from there is anyone’s guess, but it seems unlikely we’ll not hear more from them. Gerard has already proven his talents as a comic book creator with the The Umbrella Academy, while Ray is too gifted to keep quiet for too long and might make a brilliant producer. Mikey has hinted in the past that he might work on comic books, while Frank’s future is perhaps clearest: his Death Spells side-project is touring with Gerard’s wife’s band, Mindless Self Indulgence. But, for now, it looks like it’s all over. For good? Gerard Way has responded to a 16,00-strong online petition requesting a farewell tour saying, “I think it would be best to spend some more time with my letter though, as time and understanding will make it clearer why this cannot be.”

It would be a shame, though, if the most important, perfect rock band of the last decade should come to an end with a whimper rather than the grand explosion they deserve. So long My Chemical Romance.

Following the news that My Chemical Romance guitarist Frank Iero has formed a new experimental band with James Dewees (The Get Up Kids), the pair have announced that they will be releasing a 1 minute demo clip each day for a week starting tomorrow. You can read the statement in full and listen to the Death Spell’s debut track below.

“Greetings and Salutations. Starting this Tuesday, April 2 2013, death spells will be posting a 1 minute clip of a new demo every day for a week. The 1 minute demo clips will be posted to our soundcloud page and will also be conveniently located in the sounds section of our website…but you must be diligent, because each demo will be posted for one day only. For example; demo clip #1 will be posted this Tuesday, but on Wednesday demo #1 will be taken down to make room for demo #2 and so on. The week long reveal will culminate in the release of a special surprise to get everyone prepared for our tour dates with Mindless Self Indulgence starting April 11th in Baltimore MD. kill.”

With the dust still settling from their sudden split at the weekend, there are still many questions left unanswered, and few clues as to what the future holds for the band.

In this blog post we speculate on what the future holds for the individual members of My Chemical Romance, ponder whether they will ever make a comeback – and muse what may become of the existing songs from the now infamous fifth MCR record.

Gerard Way:

In the MCR frontman’s farewell letterregarding the band’s break-up, there’s a section titled ‘And another opens-‘ (in reference to a new beginning), in which Gerard seems to make some pretty clear allusions to what the comes next for him and implies that his future still lies in music. For example, he discusses purchasing a new amp:

“The purpose of the meeting was the delivery of an amplifier into my possession. I had recently purchased the amp from him and we both agreed that shipping would jostle the tubes […] A Fender Princeton Amp from 1965, non reverb. A beautiful little device.”

He also discusses a memory of first picking up his guitar to write one of My Chemical Romance’s earliest songs, Skylines And Turnstiles:

“When I wanted to start My Chemical Romance, I began by sitting in my parent’s basement, picking up an instrument I had long abandoned for the brush- a guitar. […] I plugged this into a baby Crate Amp with built in distortion and began the first chords of Skylines and Turnstiles.”

But this, for us is the key part when decoding what Gerard’s next move will be:

“I still have that guitar, and it’s sitting next to The Princeton. He has a voice, and I would like to hear what it has to say.“

To us, this is a pretty clear indicator that Gerard is about to embark on a new musical journey of his own. Will he be playing guitar in it? We’re not sure, but it appears that he has gone back to the drawing board with regards to songwriting, returning to his earliest roots that parallel the beginnings of My Chemical Romance. This, ladies and gentlemen, is very exciting.

Would he form an entirely new band of his own? Or would it be a solo project? We have no idea. We know that Gerard features on Kill Hannah frontman Mat Devine’s new solo project so perhaps there would be room for them to further collaborate with each other in the future. Shortly after MCR’s break-up Mat tweeted the following message, could this mean that Mat and Gerards musical future are more intertwined than just a one song collaboration?:

We also know that Gerard’s wife, Lyn-Z, is the bass player for Mindless Self Indulgence. Gerard’s no stranger to having his close family in bands, see brother Mikey Way, so maybe there would be room for her in a future band. If Gerard does form a new band would any other members of MCR be in it? Would they cover My Chem songs? We just don’t know. For now, we can only speculate.

Gerard has a comic book based on The Fabulous Killjoys concept from the band’s last record coming out in June. Perhaps this will yield further clues or references about the band’s break-up. Perhaps not. We’ll be the first in line to have a look though and just having a sneak peak at what’s been released already, it looks awesome.Here’s Skylines And Turnstiles that Gerard referenced in his farewell letter. Could it be a taste of things to come?:

MIKEY WAY:

Issues in Mikey’s personal life have been widely speculated on by the media recently. We’re not about to do the same here, but based on these rumours it would be understandable if Mikey decided to take some time out from musical projects. This tweet from Mikey following MCR’s split aims help clear up any debate about what impact his private life has had on the band:

FRANK IERO:

Alongside playing rhythm guitar in My Chemical Romance, Frank also has a side project by the name of Leathermouth. He formed the band in 2007, playing a mix of hardcore and post punk and crucially, Frank has been known to focus on the band during his downtime from MCR. With the breakup of My Chem, Frank has no doubt suddenly found himself with a lot of downtime. So much so that he’s recently announced he’s started a new band called Death Spells. There’s certainly more to come from this new band and it’s doesn’t take a wild stretch of the imagination to speculate that we may be about to hear a lot more from Leathermouth too – the band even have an upcoming show booked, being scheduled to play New Jersey’s Skate and Surf Festival on May 19. And what could all of this mean for Ray Toro? Scroll down and find out…

Leathermouth soon to be Frank Iero’s main focus?:

RAY TORO:

In December 2012 Ray became a father. With such a young child, we could understand if Ray took some time off. But what if he get’s a calling to hit the stage again? Well Ray has played live with Frank Iero’s Leathermouth before; could there perhaps be a further collaboration between the two if Leathermouth become Frank’s main focus? We will wait and see.

Check out Ray Toro playing with Frank Iero’s Leathermouth below:

ALBUM NUMBER FIVE:

We know that the band were working on their next album, that’s partly why it came as such a shock that the band were to split. Will the tracks that have been written ever see the light of day? The band released Conventional Weapons, the album that was supposed to be MCR’s record number 4 before it was scrapped, as a series of singles. Can we expect the what exists of MCR 5 to receive the same treatment?

We know that there are at least four tracks recorded and we know that they’re in listenable condition as Mat Devine of Kill Hannah, and a close friend of Gerard Way talked to Kerrang! Radio a couple of weeks ago about what he had heard of album number 5 so far:

“I’ve heard four new songs. It’s exactly in line with what My Chem fans will be thrilled to hear, but at the same time it really marks what I think is a new phase (for the band).

“It’s super-refreshing, but at the same time familiar in the way you want it to be.”

Will these songs ever be heard? Only time will tell. If not is would be a spectacular waste, but we have another theory of what fate could belie the tracks. Speculating wildIy, for a change, it could be possible that Gerard could carry the songs that the band has written over into a future project. Maybe re-write and tweak them, but hypothetically speaking they’d be the same songs. Just think, the first taste of Gerard’s new material, presuming there will be some, could potentially be the last echoes of My Chemical Romance – and we would never even know.

FAREWELL TOUR/REUNION?:

16,058. That’s the number of signatures that, at the time of writing, are on a petitionaiming to get My Chemical Romance to do a farewell tour. It seems like such a brutal thing to do after 12 years; break such a brilliant band up and never even play so much as a last show. The fans to give MCR a proper send off, but do the band? We hope so but we wouldn’t hold our breath for it. The break-up seems pretty final and we can’t imagine them playing again so soon.

But what about further down the line? It wouldn’t be beyond the realms of possibility for My Chemical Romance to reunite. They’ve played together for over a decade, grown from boys to men and travelled the world. Two of them are brothers but all of them, collectively, are a family. It’s deeply saddening to thing that My Chemical Romance may never take to the stage together again so we can only hope that the bond between them as friends and as family is strong enough to survive the band’s split and that they may one day make their return.

What will happen to the band, it’s members and the record that could have been? It’s probable that the band themselves don’t even know yet – but you can rest assured that as soon as it becomes clear, Kerrang! will be there to continue the story.

What do you think comes next for members of MCR? Will they ever release the foundations of the fifth album? Let us know what you think in the comments.

Meanwhile, in the time that has passed since the story broke, Twitter has been buzzing with rumours. One rumour in particular however seems to be snowballing; the idea that MCR have ‘split’ in order to leave their record label, making them free to reform under a different name and continue with the same members and a fresh start.

Whilst there’s no concrete evidence or proof for this, and no further official statements have been made to confirm or deny the rumour, we couldn’t help but try and put some of the pieces together.

Are we all just in denial? Is this just the wishful thinking of die hard fans or is there really more than meets the eye? Call us K! conspiracy nuts, but let’s look at what we know so far…

The black blog post:

Let’s face it, a paragraph doesn’t seem like a fitting way to call time on a twelve year journey and for one of the biggest bands on the planet to say goodbye. For all we know there may be a bigger statement to follow, but the existing black blog post just seems too abrupt and seems to leave too many things unsaid – it’s a gesture bordering on cold and an undeniably abrupt end to something that means so much to so many people.

Houdini and the final tweet:

Gerard Way’s final tweet, below, contains a picture of Harry Houdini, the famous escapologist, undertaking a dramatic escape as a publicity stunt. Is this all an elaborate publicity stunt? Could this be a hint that the members of MCR are trying to escape their label?

Is the image a reference to the opening line of the video to I’m Not Okay (I Promise), [“You like D&D, Audrey Hepburn, Fangoria, Harry Houdini, and croquet. You can’t swim, can’t dance, and you don’t know karate. Face it, you’re never gonna make it.“] – If so what does this mean?

We know for sure that the image appears on the sleeve of the band’s first record. Could this be a hint at a rebirth for the band? Whatever the case, like the black blog post, it almost feels too short to be sincere.

Want to know something spooky? Today is Houdini’s birthday.

The fifth studio album:

Until the sudden split My Chemical Romance were hard at work on their fifth studio record. How can a band go from sculpting their future to dissolving everything that they have overnight? To us, this just doesn’t add up.

The people closest to MCR’s reactions:

Lyn-z Way, Gerard’s wife published an extended tweet that stated, amongst other things, “I understand the need for change and the desire to begin again” and “The future starts right now. A new adventure is about to take place and I for one will be on that ride! Who’s coming with me?” – if you read this in light of the rumour that MCR are trying to reboot in order to leave their label then this post has some extremely interesting implications.

Then there’s the intriguing case of Mat Devine from Kill Hannah’s tweet, below. He’s a close personal friend of Gerard, is this a sign that there’s more to come from MCR? Or even a collaboration between Gerard and Mat?

The previous use of alter egos:

My Chem are no newcomers to using alter-egos and pseudonyms. When we saw them in 2006 they announce on the PA that My Chemical Romance would not be performing, and then played under the pseudonym of The Black Parade. Plus on the last record they referred to themselves as The Fabulous Killjoys. Could the abrupt split be little more than a name change? What would happen to the recordings that have been completed for album number five in that were the case?

Frank Iero’s new band?:

Finally there’s a blog post circulating that states that Frank Iero and James Dewees of The Get Up Kids are starting a new electronic hardcore band. What impact will this have on MCR?

All we have right now is speculation and questions, but make sure to keep your eyes on Kerrang.com for more updates and all the latest facts as we get them.

Be sure to add your take on these clues and rumours below. Is there more to come from the members of My Chemical Romance?

PropertyOfZack confirmed in a new interview yesterday with James Dewees (The Get Up Kids,Reggie And The Full Effect) that he and Frank Iero (ex-My Chemical Romance) have started a new electronic-hardcore band called Death Spells.

James: I have this other thing going with Frank from MCR called Death Spells. We’re opening up for Mindless Self Indulgence in two or three weeks. It’s more like an electronic-hardcore project. We’ve been working with a visual graphics artist and he’s been making these insane videos for us. The music is all little more intense than what MCR was or Reggie. It’s more in the vein of Ministry and stuff like that.POZ: There’s nothing out for that yet, is there?James: No, we just posted a song for fun online to get a demo out there. We have a full-length written. There’s red tape to go through before we can announce it.

On Friday, a lot of fans began wondering if Reggie came back because MCR is no longer a thing.We’ve been off from MCR for a while. For me, I’m friends with everybody, but when I came back from Los Angeles, I wanted to get busy again. I hadn’t been paying attention to it. I got a bunch of emails last night when the announcement came out. When you’re ready for something to be over, it should be over. You shouldn’t force yourself to do anything you don’t want to do anymore. I’m not 100% sure, but Gerard wants to do other stuff. Frank wants to do other stuff. They all want to. That’s fine. It doesn’t mean it’ll never happen again, but it means that everyone wants a real break from it. They don’t want to say it’s a hiatus because then it still lingers over your head. If you say you’re breaking up, cool, then you can stop. You don’t have to answer emails anymore until you want to. I think everybody is going to do a lot of great stuff solo. Everybody is so talented. It’s going to be really, really cool to see what happens in the next year or two.